The Process of A Fall
by Faye Chua
Summary: Much to his annoyance, through his interaction with a sharptongued shinigami Ichigo gains fond memories of fireflies. Written for the IchiRuki Fall Contest. Spoilers for Soul Society arc and other implied spoilers. ONESHOT.


**Title:** The Process of a Fall  
**Author:** Raynos Kai  
**Summary:** Ichigo stubbornly refuses to fall.  
**Word Count:** 1,640  
**Spoilers:** For the entire Soul Society arc, other implied spoilers  
**Disclaimer:** Your HUMAN LEGAL SYSTEMS MEAN NOTHING TO ME... however, I do not own Bleach.

_The Distraction_  
Contrary to popular belief, Ichigo really did use his closet for more than keeping winter bedding before Rukia had claimed it for her own. Despite the fact that the petite shinigami was currently living in said closet, Ichigo still insisted on keeping his things in there, claiming that it was too much trouble to move them out of the closet to another place, and it would look suspicious anyway.

Currently, he was wishing that he _had_ taken his things out in the first place.

Slamming the closet door so hard the closet nearly shook, Ichigo shot a glare at Rukia. He was ignored in favour of mangling the edge of his textbook with another of her horrible drawings on the pretext of studying. The orange-haired boy had never been a patient person, and he was most certainly not in his best frame of mind, as evidenced by his twitching eyebrow. So it was really quite unsurprising that he proceeded to shout at her.

"What is… THAT in my closet?"

Unruffled, Rukia flipped to another unmarred page and set to work with her pencil. "Fireflies," she murmured absently, attention focused on the random sketch growing in the margin. Ichigo was torn between rescuing his textbook from further defacement and keeping whatever she claimed was fireflies contained in the closet. He settled for yelling from his current position plastered against the closet door.

"What the hell would you need with insects and why do they have to be in MY closet?"

She retaliated with a nasty grin and proceeded to shade a pair of eyes over an especially highlighted paragraph. "Because the inside of a closet is dark, idiot. And I'm tired of using my kidoh to see my way around."

It took a little while for him to figure out her warped logic, but eventually he managed to say "So you use the light from the fireflies for you to see inside?"

"Yes." Rukia shut the (_unsalvageable_, Ichigo thought sourly) textbook and stood up, facing him for the first time since the conversation started, She smirked in a self-righteous and smug manner. "I've realised that you're too poor to afford candles."

Although it was true that there were no candles in the Kurosaki household, it was for a very good reason (called Isshin). And Ichigo didn't want to risk his closet getting burned down. However, no matter how 'innovative' Rukia had been, he still had to get those fireflies out of his closet. "You can't keep fireflies in a jar. They'd die," he tried reasoning. He wasn't going to admit that he hated seeing any type of animal (even those he found disgusting) in captivity. After all, he didn't want to be seen as a softie; he had a reputation to upkeep.

"I read that fireflies don't eat or drink anything," she countered, hands on hips as she glared him down. "So that isn't a problem."

"Yeah, but they'd die of loneliness or something. Don't you find that cruel?" Realising that he was starting to sound pretty stupid, he snorted and went to yank Kon from under his bed, where the plushie was cowering away from 'the monster in Nee-chan's closet'. The worst part, he reflected, was that he was beginning to find all of this _normal_.

Tomorrow, he'd get her a torch.

* * *

_The Stumbling Block_  
When Ichigo woke up in the 4th division hospital, with only the slightest of pains lingering after Orihime's healing, the first thing he saw was Rukia. Her mouth was a firm line, betraying nothing, but her eyes lost their brittleness and filled with relief instead. "You're finally awake." 

He frowned as he saw the mark of the red collar still lurking just above the lining of her kimono, but chose not to comment on it. "You're still wearing that white kimono."

"I was too busy worrying about you to think about clothes," she told him waspishly, a trace of the old Rukia he knew returning. "Why do you always get yourself into this kind of trouble?" Only now did he feel relief, seeing that rescuing Rukia wasn't a mistake after all, that she could go back to being herself and starting her life from where she'd left it.

"I beat all of them anyway," he settled for grumbling, hiding his true emotions under his usual gruff behaviour, and received a glare from Rukia for his pains. But he could feel the way her fingers tightened just the slightest from where they were resting on his arm, as if she was afraid he would suddenly fade away. The realisation that she had been worried for him caused him to feel rather uncomfortable all of a sudden. Needing a distraction, he hurriedly added, "And you're finally safe."

He was startled to see it had the opposite effect, as she only bowed her head in reply, looking as lost and as resigned as she had when he had first seen her on the execution block. That time, he had barely registered what Yoruichi had been saying; his only thought was to throw on the cloak and close the distance between him and Rukia before the firebird consumed her. But now he was right in front of her and yet he was just as helpless, unable to figure out what he could do simply to reach her.

Eventually, she spoke, more to the hands on his arm than to Ichigo himself. "I… think I understand why you told me not to keep the fireflies in the jar. I now know what's it like to be like a firefly…"

And she began crying again, much like the way she had been crying on the day of her execution, or the first time Ichigo tried to rescue her. Ichigo didn't really know how to behave around this side of Rukia he'd rarely seen; most of the time he ignored her, or ran away, but this wasn't an option here. Hesitantly, he leaned over and carefully wiped away the falling tears, ignoring the complaints from his tortured body at the awkward position he was taking. If he'd known that she had taken his careless words about fireflies so firmly to heart, he thought, he would have told her what he really thought instead of nonsense like that.

That was why, when Rukia told him a few days later that she was staying in Soul Society, he let her go.

* * *

_The Slow Slide Down_  
Sometime after they'd returned from Soul Society, during one of the quiet times when it's just him and Ichigo hanging out together listening to music Keigo would decry as old-fashioned, Chad asked. "Are you OK with Rukia staying in Soul Society?" 

The taller boy didn't say anymore, but from the way he's leaning forward ever so slightly Ichigo could see that he's interested in the answer. Ichigo leaned back and watched the vague white clouds get twisted into shapes by the wind. He wasn't sure exactly what to say; between Kon's loud wailings about missing Rukia every day, Inoue's revelation about Ishida's lost powers, and the current chaos with the Visored, he hadn't had time to think about how he felt about Rukia's absence. Now that Chad had mentioned it, he did miss her, but even though he trusted his friend, he really didn't know how to explain why he was fine with Rukia staying in Soul Society, despite the fact he preferred her here.

They were into the fifth song of the day when Ichigo finally answered. "She'll come back on her own if she wants to. Besides, I don't want to make her feel like a firefly."

Chad didn't reply; for the rest of the afternoon, music replaces conversation.

Ichigo began to suspect today is 'Remind-Ichigo-of-Rukia' day when Karin suddenly shoved a bottle of fireflies under his nose as soon as he returns. He stared at it blankly for a moment, wondering if she really knew about Rukia, before scowling and asking her, "What would I do with it?"

"I don't know," Karin replied, already climbing the stairs to her room. "But it's yours." Neither of them mention that fall was fast approaching, or that she must have searched very hard for the last fireflies of summer.

He left it in his room and forgot about it, until he came back after dinner and found his room lit with the glow of fireflies. He hestitated at the light switch for a while, before calling himself all kinds of stupid and walking into the darkened room.

"Eh, Ichigo! Aren't you going to switch on the light?"

It seemed a pity to switch on the lights and drown out the light from the fireflies, but he didn't think the bother of explaining this to Kon was worth it. Instead, he impulsively opened the window and placed the bottle of fireflies on the sill. It was all the fireflies' fault, he decided, tuning out the sounds of Kon complaining and the noises from the nightly rituals of the Kurosaki family. After all, he hated keeping anything in captivity. They were probably the reason why he himself was feeling so caged up, as if someone had built invisible walls of glass around him when he wasn't looking. It had nothing to do with him finally admitting that he missed Rukia.

He fell asleep watching the darting points of light against the night sky.

* * *

_Rukia marches back into his room like she owns the place, and Ichigo can only watch her blankly. He still can't believe that she's back from Soul Society. Kon is crying tears of joy that his Nee-san is back, but they ignore him as usual. _

Finally, he shuffles his feet and says. "I thought you would be staying at Sandal-Hat's."

Rukia smirks and shrugs, and it strikes him that it's been a long time since he's seen her so at ease. The thought makes him slightly nostalgic. "I was." She goes to the window and looks at the bottle of fireflies, then pulls off the cloth and tips them out. The specks of light linger outside the window for a moment, before drifting away into the night sky. She turns and smiles at him, a real, proper, happy smile, and her smile is as brilliant as the fireflies she's just released. "But I saw the fireflies in your window."

Ichigo's fallen, and he reflects that it isn't that bad.

**The End**


End file.
